


It's my f--king luck

by lemonbalmlemonverbena



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-14 06:50:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonbalmlemonverbena/pseuds/lemonbalmlemonverbena
Summary: added a chapter 4, in which the Hound continues sharing a den with two dire wolves~~~~Got to thinking about how Sandor Clegane would take the news that Jon Snow is rightful heir to the Iron Throne and a Targaryen by blood. Being his worst self: drunk, bitchy, craaaazy, and wallowing in self-pity, as deep as you can get.(This is in the Great Hall at Winterfell during a feast, before the Army of the Dead arrives because those dudes walk soooo slowly. Show canon.)





	1. the king's sister

Of. Fucking. Course.

The Lady of Winterfell seemed determined to get him drunk, and about now, that struck him as a fine way to spend the evening.

How did she know “Dornish sour"? Gods be good, he knew he’d never shared a drink with _her_. And yet serving wenches kept bringing him, definitely just him, Dornish sour.

Very well, he’d drink, drink a toast to the fucking King. Her brother. Her miserable black-bastard brother who wasn’t Ned Stark’s get at all, but the only surviving trueborn son of Rhaegar fucking Targaryen by way of Lyanna fucking Stark. Of. Fucking. Course.

Bloody honorable Ned Stark _would_ take in any bastard said to be his and raise him alongside his own trueborn highborn wolf-blood children. But he hadn’t railed some wayside whore and returned nine months later to find her heavy with his bastard. His sweet sister had run off with the dragon prince of Westeros. The married prince. The prince who had a wife and child already.

And who had killed that wife and those children? His own brother, of course. Fucking Gregor, the perfect monster, had crushed the skulls of Jon Snow’s half-brother and half-sister, and raped and murdered their mother.

Seven hells, Jon Snow was the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms. Had been all along--in his cradle, and on his wet nurse’s teat, he’d been the rightful King.

He’d liked Robert of House Baratheon well enough--they’d shared a taste for blood and wine, and he’d half-raised that king’s brats himself. He sometimes thought of Myrcella in quiet moments; helpless little Myrcella, dead like the rest of Lord Tywin’s grandchildren.

That day at the Tourney of the Hand it was all too much to see the little lion princess and the little wolf princess cheering for him and applauding as if he were worth something.

But the Usurper’s Dogs had made a mess of things. They put the wrong man on the throne. Who was the right man? Unknown. But Robert was a shit king, too selfish to care about anything but the next cup and the next cunt.

Too drunk to notice his own wife cuckolding him.

Too drunk to notice his own crown prince was nothing of the sort.

Arya’s shirtless swordsmith had a better claim to the throne than Joffrey had ever had.

And all along, Rhaegar had a son, secreted away in the north. What would have become of the kingdoms if he’d been discovered before today?

 _Oh good, more wine._ Maybe if he stared into the bottom of the cup long enough he would be able to keep his eyes off her up at the high table, alongside her fucking Imp.

Maybe if he got drunk enough in this back corner of the hall, he’d be able to forget the fur-trimmed neckline of that pretty dress.

_Maybe he’d not want gouge out his own eyes rather than see her smiling at her lord husband, Tyrion of House Lannister._

It was perfectly right that she be attached to a different king all these years later. It was exactly his luck.

True, the gods had seen fit to strangle the life out of her tormentor, dead at his own royal wedding. That was more grace than he'd expected from the bastards.

But she was a princess, a queen, as sure as any he’d ever seen. When he’d seen her last she was going to marry a king, and that king owned her as sure as a Ghiscari peddler owns the blue bird he keeps in a cage hanging off his handcart. She was the king’s to do with as he saw fit, and he saw fit to hurt her. Fuck the king.

It made perfect sense that her brother--not by blood, but by heart--was king now.

And so once again, no matter how much he drank, no matter how much he alternately begged and cursed the gods, she was impossible. There was nothing he could ever do or say to raise himself to her heights, or even Arya’s for that matter.

All he had to do was displease the fucking king and he would be banished with the flick of a wrist and that would be that.

He would finally be done with the Stark girls. He’d never have to see them again. He’d never see them again.

Jon Snow doted on his bloody sisters. Even now, seated next to his new queen--also aunt? _How very Targaryen of him_ \--he seemed devoted to the Lady of Winterfell. They turned toward each other often, sharing whispers, Sansa leaning forward past him to let Daenerys Stormborn in on the joke.

His Grace would probably end up married to both of them. Targaryens could do that. His aunt and his cousin, beauties both. Would Sansa have him? Probably. He went to war for her. Women like that.

Better Jon Snow than Tyrion Lannister. _Was he fooling himself that her smiles to Tyrion were thinning? That she tipped her head toward her bastard brother rather than face the little lion’s smug blather?_

Even if Jon Snow made do with _just one_ impossibly beautiful young wife, even if Sansa didn’t go back to the damn Lannister--Hand, again, of fucking course--there was no place for him anywhere near her.

They’d send her to some Dornish prince, or bind her hand to some Northern lordling with no chin.

He should have taken her that night the Blackwater burned. If he’d gotten her to her mother alive, they might have let him stay and guard her. He was good at that. He’d have kept her safe.

But he was a drunk and a coward, so he’d left her, and now she didn’t even need that. She had her Stark guards with their wolf shields, and Brienne of fucking Tarth. She even had dogs now. Didn’t need the Hound.

Her dogs were man-eaters, or so it was told. He’d seen her feed them under the table and now they rested at her feet, piled on top of her toes. He could see Tyrion’s stumpy legs hanging beside her long ones. He had a vision of the filthy Imp touching her naked body, and his heart clenched and he felt sick.

She had been so little, so sweet and stupid and gullible and kind, and Tywin Lannister stole her from her father and gave her to that wretched little goblin with his sly ways and his lies and all his whores.

The fucking Imp would give her the clap as a wedding gift.

_More wine? Less wine? Maybe he should eat something to soak it up._

Is she looking at me? The Imp looked at _her_. Is that red? The little gargoyle poured some for her and that’s definitely her lying smile and now she’s looking at me over the edge of the cup. _Thirsty. Me too, bird. Me too._

And then her brother speaks, and yes, that’s her real smile. She loves her bastard brother and he loves her, and she has her wolf sister and her strange crippled magical brother and this fortress and brave Brienne of Tarth and three black dogs and a white dire wolf and maybe two dragons and she sits at the right hand of royalty. Why the fuck hadn’t they seated Tyrion next to Daenerys Stormborn so Sansa wouldn’t have to suffer his attentions?

_Her brother is the king._

_Of. Fucking. Course._

Now she’s grown and he can smell the wolf in her more than ever--see it in the way she looks at strangers and friends alike--and she is fierce and more beautiful than ever, and...tired, he thinks.

She is dangerous now, herself, and there’s nothing he can do to keep her safe that her dogs and Brienne couldn’t do better, and yet he’s sure that even here among her people, she remains...bound.

The king is her brother, and the king’s whim is what decides her fate, and thus his.

Jon Snow--Aegon, sixth of his name, of House Targaryen, rightful king of the Andals and the First Men, protector of the realm, Lord of Dragonstone, titles titles titles--could have his head, which would be a mercy. Ah well, better to give his head to Sansa’s warrior-king brother than a cunt like Joffrey.

Jon Snow could want to know why an ugly stranger with no blood tie to Sansa or Arya Stark should be allowed within a thousand miles of the princesses of the North.

Jon Snow could decide that one Clegane was as good or as bad as the other; the family that brutally murdered his first sister could surely not suffered to keep company with the second and third.

Jon Snow could ask why he’d taken an improbable, dangerous interest in the elder, or why he’d kidnapped the younger and held her for ransom, and what the hell would he say? Neither truth or falsehood would serve.

Jon Snow could sell her off and if he told her it was her duty and that people would die if she didn’t go, she might go. He could try to sell Arya, too, but she’d cut off his balls before she ran into the wilderness. At least he didn’t have to worry about _that_ one dutifully obeying her brother’s command that she walk herself into an early grave.

_More wine. Fuck the king._


	2. both of them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's still drunk! And still maudlin. But...
> 
> The continuing adventures of Sandor in his cups at Winterfell.

“You sit up there, woman. Above the salt,” he said. _Fucking hell, what are you doing to me? Just leave me in peace. I don’t want to smell your cinnamon hair._

“I am the Stark in Winterfell, and I’ll sit where I please,” she said.

_Ugh._

“Suit yourself,” he said, sneering.

When he’d arrived at Winterfell, she’d been dressed as severely as a military widow, or perhaps some spinster aunt who’d been running her brother’s household for a generation or four.

And now...at this fucking dinner, she was...the dress was silky-looking, and there was white ermine at the neck and the cuffs and along the hem. Her hair was styled like it had been that last night in the Red Keep before he’d made the stupidest decision of his cursed life: leaving her.

_Is she laughing at me? Yes. She is._

_And draining_ my _cup, too._

_I didn’t say she could do that._

“This is what you smelled like in King’s Landing,” she said, swirling the liquid in the goblet and inhaling before finishing it off. “Littlefinger always served Arbor Gold, but every so often I’d smell Dornish sour on someone’s breath, and I’d think of you,” she said, looking him right in the eyes.

He thought of the men who’d been standing close to her. He thought of Littlefinger’s head peering out into the North from a spike bolted into the crenellations of Winterfell’s wall, and he smiled, feeling oddly grandiose.

“I don’t drink anymore, you know,” he said.

“I can see that,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “Can I ask you something?”

He felt too drunk to even say “yes, you can do whatever you want to me, doesn’t matter,” so he just waved _yes_ instead.

“Are you married?”

He about choked and then just stared at her, horrified.

_Is she fucking blushing? Seven hells, Stark._

“Kingsguard are forbidden to marry, but you haven’t been Kingsguard for quite some time. I...is there--do you have a bride hidden away somewhere? Are you betrothed? That sort of thing,” she asked, stuttering and sheepish, asking questions of him that were quite beneath the dignity of the Lady of Winterfell.

“No, I’m not _married_. Gods, why are you always such a bitch?” he snarled, beyond aggravated.

She was never cruel before. Was she? Rubbing it in, salt on the wound and all that.

“ _You_ are terribly drunk, so I’m going to ignore everything horrible you say until tomorrow at the earliest. Do your worst, Clegane. Now, I can’t have you passing out in the Great Hall at Winterfell. We have to at least keep up appearances, if nothing else. Stand up, and I’m going to take your arm. Lean on me if you feel like you’re going to stumble. Arya said your leg is bad now, so lean on me. Promise? I can take it so long as I don’t have to pull you up from a dead faint on the floor,” she said.

 _I’m not going to_ faint _. I’ve been drinking like this and much worse since before you were born. Fuck off. I hate you, Stark. I hate your whole cursed stupid family, your Northern fool of a father, your hostile little sister, your dragonborn brother and most of all_ you _._

He hoped she could tell how much he hated her.

“Stand up,” she whispered, petting his beard with a soft palm and then tracing his cheekbone with her thumb.

He refused to stand, out of spite, and because he was very drunk, and because if he moved, her hand would fall away from his face.

“What did you do to him?” snarled a familiar voice. The little one.

“I didn’t _do_ anything! I think he finished off the whole cask. I told Ysa to keep his cup full. Where were _you_ anyway?” hissed Sansa.

“Why is he _my_ problem?” muttered Arya.

_This was one of the seven hells. He wasn’t sure which, but definitely one of them._

He stood now, desperate to get away from them. He couldn’t remember where he was supposed to sleep. Did he ever know? Tents, stables, kennels, rooms, hallways, fields, forests, he’d laid his head down in all of them at one time or another. There was a time when he’d have paid for a bed and a bed warmer, but it was so long ago he couldn’t remember the last place he’d done that. King’s Landing...sometime? Who was the whore? Couldn’t remember that either.

She’d put him off whores, to his everlasting misery. He’d rather be alone with his hand and his thoughts of her than confront the distance between her and the kind of woman you paid to suck your cock.

And here she was. After all these years.

Where are we going, woman? This way? Sure.

If he flicked an eye down he saw her hair glinting the torchlight. He both hated and loved how every moment with her gave him more memories to pile in his stores of her. Having seen her here, grown, he realized he had to let go of everything they’d had in King’s Landing because it was _terrible_ \-- _filthy_ \--to think that his lusts had been for _that_ wee changeling.

What could have possessed him to even notice her back then?

“Turn left,” grunted the little one, nudging him around a corner and in the process pushing him into Sansa’s path.

“Fuck off,” he growled down to Arya--she hadn’t grown even a bit taller since he’d seen her last--but even as he did it Sansa took his arm.

_I didn’t say she could do that._

He thought he heard Sansa let out a little breath. She was probably offended that he’d said _fuck,_ because she was a proper little lady--Lady Stark, the noble head of the oldest and most storied great house in all of Westeros. Not to mention sister to the high king. _Of. Fucking. Course._

His face felt tired.

He wished he could just rest it on Sansa's head for a moment--just a moment--but she’d collapse beneath him and crack her skull on the stone floor and it was a pretty skull, with pretty hair on it. He didn’t want her skull to crack.

“Old man!” hollered Arya. Ugh, so loud. It was quiet in this place after the racket of the Great Hall. Why so loud, little one? “Stairs,” she shouted up at him, pushing him ahead of her with both hands, “Try not to trip and fall on your ugly face. You couldn’t possibly look more bashed in, but you might crack a tooth, and we can’t be wasting maesters on the likes of you.”

No.

He felt them trailing just behind him as he trudged up the stairs. Where were they taking him anyway? Dungeons should be down, shouldn’t they? When is the war going to start? The war would feel better than whatever dead animal was sitting inside with his mouth and _these two_ haunting him.

These two belonged to Ned Stark’s shade. These two belonged to Jon Snow, the fucking king. He was just a pitiful broken-down cripple.

And then she was unlocking a door and Arya was shoving him inside and _she_ was fumbling with the leather ties at the collar of his cloak, which meant she was close, cocking her head to and fro as she fussed with the knots.

He made fists with his hands so he didn’t try to touch her. With her standing so close--right there--could run his hands up and down her flanks more than once before she had a good chance to squirm away.

Cloak gone. His red woman hangs it up, so proper and neat and nice. Can’t help herself. It’s her nature.

Arya shoves him toward the bed. It seems like a nice bed; soft gray knit thing on it.

“Help me get his boots off,” says Arya.

“I can hear you two--you know that, don’t you?” he said. “I’m drunk, not deaf.” He ran his hand across his face a couple of times, and then they had his boots off, and he crawled up toward the pillow. It was soft. The room was dark and still, and he could hear those two fussing with a wooden chest that had a squeaky lid and then he thought he smelled the warm honey of a lit beeswax candle.

They were whispering and he couldn’t understand them--maybe he _was_ deaf?--but he thought the cadence and the syllables and the sound of what they were saying felt gentle...and fond?

_My clever little funny warm soft dangerous beasts of the far North._

_I missed you._

_I missed you, I did._

_Every fucking day._

_Very strange that they were supposed to be sisters._

Maybe when he woke up in the morning the war would have started and he would be washed away on the tide of a battle and maybe he’d never come back and then he wouldn’t have to think about those two anymore.


	3. morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OK one more chapter. He's awake! And sobered up after sleeping it off!

As Sandor Clegane came to, his first conscious thought was that he had to piss so badly it was painful.

His second conscious thought was that she was definitely still in the room, and that he was about to get the worst beating of his life, and the least he could do was take it like a man. He’d learned well enough that fleeing her just hurt more in the end.

He rolled off the bed, rubbing the sleep out of his puffy eyes. Yep, she’s here. _Oh fuck me this is her room, isn’t it?_

He made his way behind the screen and unlaced his breeches and unleashed a long hot stream of dark yellow piss. He found a rough cloth and dipped it in the basin of cool water and scrubbed his face and hands, and rinsed out his mouth with some horrible-tasting sage-rosemary concoction.

He inhaled a gulp of air but tried not to be too obvious about it and made sure he was completely tucked back in and stepped around the partition to face Ned Stark’s daughter.

There was that little smile again, the same smile you’d give the troublesome child who was secretly your favorite. Then her eyelashes fluttered a little and she looked back down to the work in her hands.

He could think of a hundred horrible alienating things to say, but none of them seemed right.

He fidgeted with his hands and he felt his mouth twitch and tried to remember how he’d been with the Lannisters, standing watch but at once absent.

He realized he’d been staring at her, hard, when she looked back up at him and gestured to the chair beside her. She had a little table and chairs that stood next to the hearth. He saw a cream-yellow wheel of cheese and smelled a fresh buckwheat loaf, the yeast smell carried on the steam evident in the air above the bread.

After he sat down and tore off a hunk of the bread with his hands, he threw a leg over the arm of the chair, which was too small to feel right, as was most furniture. She poured a horn of weak ale--no, mead--and handed it to him.

“You gonna eat?” he asked.

“I already did,” she answered. “When I was in the kitchens, I asked Tamzin to open another cask of red and she said the one from last night was still more than half full. I thought you were joking when you said you stopped drinking, but it’s true and now you can’t hold your alcohol anymore.”

And then Sansa Stark giggled at him, and it was moderately irritating except he realized that she was smiling her real smile, the one she showed to her pretty brother the fucking king and not the one she used on the damn Imp and his like.

And somehow, he’d spent the night in what he was fairly sure was Sansa Stark’s own bed. Was that possible? And the Imp definitely had not been there, he was sure of that. He swallowed another hunk of bread and washed it down with the mead.

“Didn’t mean to steal your bed,” he muttered, by way of apology.

“You didn’t steal it, I shared it to you,” she said, looking right into his eyes.

He could think of another hundred horrible alienating things he could say and should say, but again, none of them seemed right. His head throbbed a little. But despite the chill that was everywhere now--it was the North in winter after all--the fire was warm, and there was food in his belly, and the Stark was sitting with him.

“That’s my cloak,” he said, gesturing at the garment in her hands.

“I’m darning the holes--I don’t have exactly the right color thread and don’t have time to dye anything to match. Hope you don’t mind,” she said, peering close to get a stitch placed correctly and knowing full well he didn’t give two shits about the _color_ of anything he wore--the fact that she was troubling herself over him was already too much.

Gods be damned, she had become the great lady she was always meant to be but for a detour through half a dozen years of misery. He’d been able to serve her, a little in King’s Landing, and more so by trying to keep the sister, but now she was watching over him.

Very strange. Not bad, but very very strange.

He’d always been hers to command, but he hadn’t expected a mutual protection. He supposed it was what good ladies--few though they were--did for their people: watched over them, fed them, mothered them, as it were.

He thought, not for the first or last time, what a good mother she would be, someday, to some other man’s sons and daughters.

There was a knock on the door, and Sansa put down her mending and stood to answer it. Her dove-gray dress had a high collar embroidered with pretty needlework birds. He wondered why she’d chosen that design or why she’d chosen to wear that dress on this day.

The soul on the other side of the door was Winterfell’s maester. “My lady, the petitioners are ready for you,” he said, looking over her shoulder curiously at the man in Lady Stark’s room who was not her kin.

“Thank you, Maester Wolkan. I’ll be down shortly,” she said, firmly closing the door and shutting her back in with him.

She picked up his grubby dun-colored cloak and ran her hands over it carefully, looking to see that her work was complete and that she hadn’t missed any holes. Satisfied, she handed it over to him.

“I hope that feels warmer now. The wind blows so cold in winter, it’s good to keep things patched up,” she said. He grunted. He knew she was doting on him, and he recognized it despite his relative unfamiliarity with the situation. For all his hideous look, he’d been popular enough with the servant women wherever he’d lived. If they were decent to him, he treated them well and was sometimes rewarded for it. But that was different. Rarely, if ever, had someone as grand as Lady Stark even deigned to acknowledge him, much gone out of her way to be kind.

She did it for all, high and low, but he was the only one who was so very vulnerable to her, wasn’t he?

“Thank you,” he said, trying to sound as if he weren’t wholly unfamiliar with the words.

“You’re so welcome,” she said, positively glowing. Ugh, now he knew what she looked like when she was pleased with him and he’d have to live with _that_ for the rest of his life.

“Will you walk me downstairs?” she asked.

“Aye, Stark, I can do that,” he said.

She leaned her head on his bicep _three_ fucking times on the way downstairs and then when he brought her into the Great Hall, Tyrion peered at them through narrowed eyes. Upon seeing that, he made a point to lean down close to her ear and whisper, “I’ll see you soon, sweet little bird.”

She blushed bright red. He chuckled at her and enjoyed that his words served to both make her happy and make the dwarf miserable.

Maybe his luck wasn’t so very bad after all.


	4. by firelight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the ladies of house stark are toying with sandor clegane and enjoying themselves immensely

“What’s wrong with you?” snarled Sandor Clegane.

“Nothing,” barked back Arya Stark.

_Wait, that’s not how you’re supposed to talk to people you...care...about._

_How_ do _you do it?_

“What’s wrong...with...you? That’s the third time you’ve missed the target. You’re liable to kill some old ewe wandering through the yard,” he said. He said the first part quieter. Not so crabby-sounding.

He wasn’t sure how he was _supposed_ to do it, but he’d been thinking maybe he should try to be quieter, with those two at least. Since he’d been in Winterfell, he’d seen them laugh at him again and again when he tried to yell at them.

Whenever he hollered at one or the other or both, Arya would cackle, “Who cares what _you_ think anyway, _stupid_?” and Sansa would just gaze at him fondly and...touch him.

For that matter, he didn’t seem to _need_ to yell to get his message across. Both of them kept asking him such improbable questions as “What do you think?” and “Do you trust this person or that person?” and “What would you do?” It was very odd. No one ever asked him those questions, much less listened to his answers with apparent consideration.

“Nothing, I’m fine,” said Arya as she wiped her snotty nose on her sleeve. She cleared her throat, and it sounded like she had pudding in her lungs, and then she missed a _fourth_ shot. Until just now, he hadn’t seen her miss the target _once_ since he’d been here. Hell, scouts for the dead had come to the edge of the wolf’s wood, and she’d picked them off, one by one, with obsidian-tipped arrows from hundreds of yards of away. Their own scouts said the dead were hugging the coast and planned to walk along the beach from here to their final destination. No one was sure where that was, but he thought King’s Landing would be a good guess.

He strode over to the little brat and put his hand on her forehead. She tried to wiggle away but not bloody likely. Burning up, of course.

He knocked the bow out of her hand and threw her over his shoulder, the way he had long ago at the Twins. She couldn’t bite him or claw him this way, although she would probably try, just to show him who was boss.

“Fuck you, Clegane!” he heard her scream, except the sound was hoarse and raw. _Yes, yes. I hate you too, kid._

* * *

He should go. This was strange, wasn’t it? He wasn’t their kin. He was no healer. He’d done a few field repairs in his day, binding broken bones or pulling tourniquets tight on wounds that would otherwise bleed a man to death, but this wasn’t anything he could help with. Was it?

And yet he’d been the one to know she was off, and he felt proud of himself for that. He was too old and jaded to think his presence would be of any use to her, but somehow he was...invested? What if she needed something? What if the other one needed something? Maybe if he was quiet and invisible, they’d forget he didn’t belong until something went wrong and then he could...maybe he’d be the one they asked for help?

The little bird had Winterfell’s white-bearded maester and Jon Snow’s plump friend who’d studied at Old Town and half a hundred servants and vassals to do her bidding. _What good would he be compared to that?_

_Never mind._

“I should go,” he muttered.

And then the little bird looked up at him with what could only be called distress. He’d startled her, and she was fluttering, alarmed.

“She’d want you to stay. I want you to stay. Stay. Please?” said the bird, her perfect face wrinkled up in confusion and shame. He realized he’d forced her to comfort _him_ in his fear of _them_ , when she had quite enough to do tending to her sister, and then he felt shame and sadness too.

He would do horrible things to make his relationship with the Stark girls what he wanted it to be, but he also realized that the truth was that finding his place with them was so very hard for him. This, whatever it was, called for goodness and patience and forbearance and any number of other virtues he hadn’t ever practiced very much.

“Of course, Lady Stark,” he said, nodding. _Yes, that’s wise. Call her Stark. You’re not here because she’s your bird and the other one is your tiny pet direwolf. You’re here because you serve great lords and ladies. It’s not personal. Just work._

The pupper had been wrapped in some soft knit and fed broth and sedated with sweetsleep and put to bed. He could hardly see her under the stack of furs piled atop her. They were in Sansa’s room again. She’d refused to let them put Arya in Arya’s room, saying that her bed was bigger and that she needed someone to watch over her until the fever broke and who better than her own sister. She’d been sitting on the edge of the bed stroking back her sister’s hair from her face for a long time now.

Her own hair was plaited into a long copper braid and hung over her shoulder. It shone in the firelight and he wondered what it would be like touch it, just for a minute. He knew the feel of it would never be for him, but still. He longed.

And then, as if she’d heard his thoughts somehow, she tugged at the lace tying the braid and pulled it apart with her fingers and then she looked like the mythic, wild creature he believed her to be, in his deepest heart, past where he let himself look. If he looked that far it would kill him, because that was where he knew that she was his, and he was hers, and they were not just meant to be together but that they always were, always had been, always would be, and no distance or time or circumstance could make that untrue.

But that way--letting himself live in that thought--would kill him, because the distance between what he believed and the truth was too much. He would go wholly mad trying to reconcile the impossibilities.

“Have I told you yet that I’m glad you’re here?” said Sansa Stark. His heart clenched and tried not to react but he was pretty sure his eyes betrayed him.

“It’s true, if I haven’t said it,” she continued. “Do you know I used to pray for you?”

“Why would you do that?” he scoffed.

“Because I was a fool who didn’t...because I couldn’t talk to you. So I prayed instead. I thought  maybe the gods would speak to you on my behalf. Tell you that I wanted to know where you were, and that I wanted to know what you thought of things that had happened. And then after a while I began to make decisions based on the picture of you I had in my head. I mean, it wasn’t you. It was merely my idea of you. But sometimes I’d say the thing I thought you would say. I never learned how to be a wolf from my father or my brothers. I wasn’t paying attention, although I don’t think they tried ever much in any case--so I remembered the Hound instead. I remembered what you said about killers,” she told him.

He couldn’t look at her then, he had to close his eyes for a minute, to take all that in. He felt the cold stones at his back, where he was leaning against the wall, and he felt the pinch of his just-too-small boots. And he thought about what he could say to her that wouldn’t give himself away completely.

He felt stricken. Could she see it? Probably. “I thought about you, too, sometimes. What you would want me to do? I couldn’t see why I was considering taking the imaginary advice of a little girl from the country, but sometimes I did it anyway. More fool me,” he grunted.

She was bloody glowing, with her hair and her blue eyes, bright and glistening. She clasped her hands in her lap for a minute and looked down at them and he thought how she could be some kind of holy woman. And then she bloody stood up and came over to him and put her hands on his chest and stood up on the very tips of her toes and kissed him.

On the mouth.

“Don’t do that,” he said, through a frown so heavy felt like his face was being pulled down by iron weights. He flicked an eye over to the girl sleeping opposite him. Did Arya understand the nature of his feelings for her pretty sister? Probably. But what would she think of him taking liberties? He wasn’t fit consort for the likes of Sansa Stark.

The lady in question looked stricken and she ran her fingers through his beard and whispered in a voice that could only be called desperate: “Why not? Why can’t I have this?”

“Because if I kiss you, I’m going to want to fuck you, and if I fuck you, you’re mine forever,” he said, with a warning look that he was _sure_ would do to push her back.

“So you’re saying that if I kiss you, you’ll marry me?” she said, sad and smiling at once.

He inhaled sharply.

“That’s not possible,” he muttered.

“You already told me you don’t have a wife, so I don’t see what the trouble is,” she smirked. He felt unaccountably cornered, but then she stood on her tiptoes again and held onto his shoulders to brace herself. Her kiss was as soft and sweet as he’d dreamed a thousand thousand times. Sandor hummed his pleasure into her mouth and her lips parted and he slipped his tongue inside and the bloody bird threw her head back and moaned. He dared to spear her hair though his fingers as he kissed her deeply.

_If Arya wakes up and sees this, I’m truly fucked._

_Oh well...at least I’ll have one happy memory._


End file.
